Friday, February 12, 2010

Jones Day: A Follow-Up

Tom -

The person who wrote to you about the Jones Day project left out several important details:

1. Jones Day never told Hudson that it was a privilege log review, instead telling them it was a straight review using Documatrix. Presumably, this was to save money on the hourly rate, because priv log is always a higher rate.

2. The first year associate Jaime is getting a bad rap. The real jerks are the senior associates, Marla Bergman and Joe Hand. They're the ones being nasty and acting arrogant toward the temps and threatening to fire them daily. They're also the ones who fired the entire project after the first week and then hired all new people.

So please take Jaime off the hook. She wasn't that bad and is presumably under a lot of pressure from the two senior associates mentioned above.

They're all bitches at Jones Day - literally. The NY office has to be at least 70% female attorneys. They're lucky to still be in business... But, then again, it's still the males who are the movers and shakers in the upper echelons of BigLaw, and they bring in all the business. Always has been this way, always will.

Over the course of my miserable temp life I have truly tried to give everyone benefit of the doubt and made allowances for pushy associates in that they must be under a lot of pressure. Some are -but some are pricks just for the fun of it. Some get drunk with power as are finally able to bully someone in their nerdy lives.

I agree there are temps who are slow, stupid and total wackos, but the bulk of them are decent people [maybe just a little scared because of the way they are treated].

It's pretty easy to tell when an associate is under pressure and when they are just being bitches.

That priv log project at Jones Day is the law's equivilent of the Bataan Death March: if you're sick, exhausted, and can't make their ridiculous, impossible 200 entries per 8 hours, they shoot you and throw your body in a ditch on the side of the road.

Seriously. I never experienced anything so insane in my life.

And this Hand guy is a sociopath. For real. Jamie's bossy and bitchy, but he's the real problem.

I wish someone would draw a humorous cartoon of Yentl, HandJob, and Betty dressed like Japanese soldiers executing temps for not logging fast enough. Not that there was anything humorous about the actual Bataan Death March but we need the humor here right about now.

Oh My God - I am peeing in my pants from laughing at the comments on this blog!! Some of yous is too funny!!

Anyway, I don't know about Gallard - but another guy Bradley was let go right? He was actually one of the most decent people they had - how could they let Bradley go and keep Goofy Gallard???

That is just such a weird firm - apparently being nice and competent means nothing to the paralegal management there - they are all major morons - just getting by on lots of attitude and little substance.

And as for all the associates writing in justifying their actions why don't you just start by being nicer. Temps are not THAT stupid. They all understand you guys are under the gun as well - and are looking to co-operate. But you are making it really hard for them by being so bossy and bitchy - take it easy girlfriend. It's really not all that...it may seem like it right now but the glamor will soon fade, you will be surrounded by mountains of musty paper and your ass will look like that of a middle-aged Babushka.

Yentl/Heath Ledger's Joker/Willow and HandJob must have thought they could get away with a Bataan Death March, just like the Japanese and Nazis thought they could get away with atrocities during WW2. They probably thought, "They're only temps. They have no power, unity, or voice. What can they possibly do to hurt us?"

Obviously, they underestimated the power of Tom the Temp's blog, if they were even aware that The Unwashed Masses (temps, in their over-inflated, arrogant worldview) even had an outlet like this blog to call out them and anyone else who's abusive and disrespectful to the temporary help that does their grunt work for them, while they get the glory, the promotions, and the bonuses.

It's your asses on the line, associates, not the temps. You should be nicer and more respectful and professional towards the help. Temps went to law school and passed the bar, too. You don't know why people were forced into temping, you don't know their history. Some might even have been associates like you before being laid-off or otherwise losing their job. The same misfortune could happen to you, too.

Remember the old sayings:

Treat and speak to others as you'd want to be treated and spoken to.

You may meet the same people on the way up as on the way down.

Contemplate it. No one at the associate level has total job security. You might wake up one morning and it will all be gone, and you'll be forced to slave in the document mines with those you used to shit on........

Middle class TTT non-WASP middle american small town white losers like 90% of you on this board can no longer compete in the legal market. Instead of being bitter and complaining, you people need to do something to fix this country. Why not offer yourselves as free labor slaves to China? Since we can't pay off our debt in monetary terms why offer the services of you useless whiners with no discernible job skills to the Chinese for free? Be a patriot and be the best you can be. Build Chinese roadway infrastructure.

Now legal doc review is being "altsourced" to non-JD college graduates in Engineering, Science, and Accounting...

From DC Craigslist:

CASE ASSISTANTS NEEDED - Washington, D.C. – The Partners Group is seeking sharp college graduates to serve as Temporary Case Assistants for a large D.C. law firm. Candidates with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering are strongly preferred. Candidates with a B.S. or B.A. in Accounting or Finance are also encouraged to apply. The work will consist of reviewing documents for a large litigation matter for word searches and coding purposes. No related experience is required. The project is expected to start February 22nd and will take place in the firm’s downtown D.C. office and last 2 to 3 months. The pay rate will be $16 to $18 per hour depending on level of experience. Candidates who are interested in applying should forward their resumes to availability@partners-group.com. No phone calls please.

Sure, once non-lawyer, non-native English speaking, non-JD holding, unlicensed foreigners can do it with "supervision" why not just hire people that actually speak and read English properly?

I'm sure many clients and firms have come around to the realization that outsourcing to India not only doesn't save any money, but it's an outright scam. It's dubious on so many levels, no wonder they are bringing the work back. What took them so long?

Eventually they will realize that attorneys should be doing this work. Smart firms and clients already know this.

Father - you well know who is the imposter. You cannot fool me - but because you are such a kook I love you anyway! Plus I have a great deal of work to be done in Bali - shortly hereafter I shall move to Haiti.

Carry on, Father, carry on our mission in the U.S. with the troubled temps. They too have been hit by seismic tsunamis of debt and shattering earthquakes of the legal market.

I hope soon to have some hot milk and a few minutes of Masterpiece Theatre as Sister Marie-Agnes rubs my feet.

Right, they would feed, clothe and house an unlicensed Nigerian Attorney, but any American attorneys can just forget it. In fact they are actively aiding and abetting the destruction of our careers and ability to make a living.

They are all bitches. At least the associates have some education - what about bitchy recruiters who graduate from third-rate law schools and don't even have the balls to practice law - just recruit poor souls - but have so much attitude and lord it over people from much BETTER schools. Please ladies if you are a recruiter from a low-level school don't act too big for your boots. We all know why you became a recruiter and not an actual lawyer. Toodle-dooo

You call it the "U.S. Bar" as if it were the national equivalent of a state bar, which it is not. The American Bar Association (ABA) is a trade association ostensibly for the legal profession, but in fact heavily dominated by the interests of big law firms. It is nothing more and nothing less.

If people here want to see changes in ABA policy, they are going to have to join the ABA en masse, attend ABA conventions, and GET ACTIVE. The ABA is still at least nominally a "democratic" (small "d") organization. (Whether that's true in actual fact is a matter of debate.) As long as it has the nominal trappings of democracy (elections, debates, etc.) people should make use of those things, or else stop whining about how unfair they are.

They ARE unfair, unethical, and unscrupulous, but that is because rank-and-file members of the profession have allowed the ABA to be captured by big law firms and their vested interests.

It is the U.S. Bar. That is the ABA and the state bars. What the difference? They're all the same fucking thieves.

Yes we are all mud people. But it is what Critical Legal Studies calls "the reproduction of hierarchy." The law schools select people who are like sheep and care about prestige and won't question the System.

You keep saying, someone should do something, what are you doing?

Attend their fucking meetings? Are you kidding? This shows what a sheep you are.

How about being like the Weathermen and bombing their offices and murdering all their leadership.

The obvious difference between the ABA and the state bars is that the ABA doesn't license lawyers. Maybe it should. If a national licensing exam could be taken in lieu of a state one, maybe the ABA's ranks would swell and they'd have to take into account the opinions of lawyers who aren't partners at Biglaw firms.

Hand is, likely, hanging on to his career by threads. Believe it or not, big firms don't staff their best and brightest on running herd over contract attorneys. The stars are doing other work. Hand, I'm guessing, knows this, so is freaked out about his assignment and takes it out on the folks he supervises. That's an understandable yet maladaptive response for all involved. Temp attorneys have a warped view of what big firm associates are like b/c they assume someone supervising them must be important. Wrong. Associates supervising temporary attorneys have been told in bright, flashing letters: "Get a different job. Now. We'll fire you soon." Associates doing well at big firms are doing substantive work, not goose-stepping around a basement filled with attorneys clicking away. I've never been staffed on a temp project, but, the day that I am, will be the day I realize I need to leave.

Funny, I've never been offered a higher rate for a priv log. The rate is what it is, whether you're doing a priv log, constructing timeline, writing memos, or doing a doc review that a trained monkey could handle.

So sad that Jones Day has so many unhappy people working there. It is all about money and the compassion is gone. Remember Big Guys, what goes around comes around. Your time could be closer than you think!

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